r/sleeptrain

My 5.5 month old is somehow continually getting worse sleep. Around 2-3 months he was sleeping from 7-8pm ish til 3-4 am ish to eat consistently,( even got a few 8-6 nights) then would sleep til around 6 and eat again, and sometimes nap til 8-9. A week or so after he turned 4 months he started the frequent wakings more like around a 1 am wake up, then again around 4 and 6 roughly. That lasted a few weeks. Now over the past week he has gotten much worse. He gets put to bed between 7-8 pm, based on when he was wakes up from his final nap. Hes waking up within an hour of being put down, sometimes less that 20 min, and is absolutely screaming sobbing when he gets up. And that continues hourly all night long. No swollen gums or visible teething. He’s been doing the drooling and chewing everything for 2 months and no change in that. He’s passing gas easily at night.

He use to be easy to settle overnight. He would wake up, diaper change, eat, and go back down no tears. On bad nights, the second half of the night after the 3 am feed he would co sleep, but always make it the majority of the the night in the bassinet. Now even being held doesn’t help him sleep. He seems upset held and rocked, in his bassinet, or in my bed out of desperation. Nothing is helping us get any sleep.

He recently transitioned to 3 naps a day. Wake windows around 1.75/2/2/2.5 roughly depending on tired cues. He gets between 3-4 hrs of nap time over the 3 naps. Usually ends up being 3 hr 45 min. Prior when he was doing the 4 naps a day he was having a lot of issues napping during the day and fighting sleep, but the new nap schedule helped a lot to where he goes down easily for naps and 50% of the time makes it though a nap non contact once sat down.

Is he over tired ? Under tired ? Just a regression? Teething ? Is something wrong I’m missing ? Anyone have any advice or a similar issue ??

We are on Ferber day 10 and my baby is still screaming himself to sleep for 10-20 minutes. Putting him down drowsy but awake, he screams like he’s in pain as soon as he hits the mattress. My husband is doing the check ins since it’s extremely hard for me emotionally. Right now since it’s day 10 he’s checking in at half an hour but I got him to check at 10 minutes yesterday since I couldn’t bear it.

Hes almost 6 months old, 3-4 naps a day. They’re up and down right now anywhere from 20 min to an hour, on average 35 min - he’s a fomo baby and never has been a great napper. We do crib naps. WWS 2/2.5/2.5/2.75. Bed time routine bath, lotion, sleep sack, feed, book, bounce until drowsy.

He is a colicky baby and we have used the bouncy ball to get him to sleep at night/all naps. He was a good sleeper around month 3-4 then slowly got worse until he was waking up hourly and we would bounce him back to sleep. We used to have to vigorously bounce him but now it’s light bouncing as I’m trying to get him out of the habit

This much screaming does not seem typical after over a week of sleep training and it’s been so hard on us. Is he just too young for sleep training or not ready or maybe Ferber just isn’t for him? Not sure where to go from here.

Please check your coverage under your work benefits for social work, and some sleep consultants will be covered under your benefits!!!!

You have to make sure the sleep consultant is a RSW and you can submit to insurance for coverage.

I did not know this but had to share. I have an apt tomorrow afternoon for a consult :)

We have a camping trip coming up for Labor Day weekend. It’s going to be a little too warm for my then 5 month old to sleep in her Merlin sleep suit. Right now she’s 4 months and sleeps through the night and takes 2 hour naps in the Merlin. Would you endure however long it takes to get her accustomed to a regular sleep sack to prep for said camping trip? Or would you take just accept that she’s going to have a weekend of bad sleep in the sleep sack and go back to Merlin after the trip? We tested out a night in the sleep sack last night and she was up every couple hours talking and playing with her hands/legs.

We have a pop up camper and it does have AC so it’ll be cold at night but during the day it may have a harder time keeping up.

Hello everybody. Hope you don't mind me posting here but I'm fully at my wits end.

We have a soon to be ten month old girl and she's really dependent on us. Using AI I managed to break the midnight / 2 am wake ups by using the 3/3/4 method and this worked a dream for about a fortnight. But since then our little girl has decided to keep waking up at the end of her 45 minutes cycle, and this has been going on for just short of two weeks. She will scream and scream until we go in (I usually try and give her about 15 minutes to self soothe) and then when we go in she'll just scream until picked up. When we do this she will then lie awake on us for 2+ hours. It's as if she's fully dependent on us being there when she is breaking out of the first cycle. Since we've felt we have had no choice but to bring her down and calm her with lullabies I'm almost certain we have accidentally trained her that this is the normal thing and that's now why it's happening.

Our lad (now four and half) slept through from six weeks old so this is all completely new to us, and I'm starting to lose the will with her if I'm honest. Genuinely, I don't look forward to nighttime any more. If we could crack the code of getting her down at night I feel we could achieve so much more than sitting around watching the same lullabies over and over.

I apologise sincerely. I didn't mean to vent and create a text well. But what can I do?!

Looking for advice….my 6 mo old is bottle fed and still waking multiple times in the night to eat. The pediatrician said she should not be eating from 11pm -3am. She’s still waking up at least twice to eat before or after those hours. Tonight I reached my breaking point. I’m exhausted. She goes to bed at 7 and woke up at 10 which I fed her 6oz like a dream feed hoping it would give me some significant chunk of sleep. Nope. She woke up at 220 to eat. I let her cry and went in to rub her back a few times between 220 and 3 but she would not stop crying and not go back to sleep. After 40 minutes of crying I relented and fed her. She’s eaten 12oz in the time she’s been in her crib. It is ridiculous considering I can barely get her to eat 12oz during the day before 2pm. I sleep trained. She’s put down awake every night and falls asleep on her own. I’m absolutely at a loss here but so so so tired and so ready for at least a solid 7 hour stretch from her.

My little guy is 6 months tomorrow and I think its tome to start sleep training. He never really slept well but then 2 regressions hit and its probably been 3 months of hourly wakes. I'm beyond burned out and cannot function properly.

He has always been rocked to sleep, we also exclusively contact nap during the day. I tried dropping to 3 naps but he struggles with even a 2 hour wake window and the days he did have 3 naps he sould wake at 5am instead of 7am.

I’m the only one in my mom friend circle that supports sleep training. My LO is 6 months and I sleep trained right when he turned 4 months using the Ferber method and he took great to it. Sleeps great for the most part. However, my friends will passive aggressively make remarks about how sleep training is not biologically normal and how I basically trained my baby to think I’ve abandoned him. I just feel guilty whenever I’m around them. Although I will say, my baby sleeps the best out of everyone. They are constantly talking about how their babies wake up 6-8 times a night at ages older than mine. Idk it seems counterproductive if everyone is exhausted. Any advice on what to say? They are great people but it’s just whenever sleep gets brought up. It partly feels like they are jealous that we sleep and they don’t. I normally just stay quiet but I’m getting sick of it. My baby barely cried during sleep training and now actually prefers to put himself to sleep and is happy as can be. It’s just so hard to hear those things.

My 3.5yo recently transitioned out of her crib. She’s now falling asleep independently and sleeping through with zero wakings until around 5:30–6am. We’re working on early mornings with silent returns and teaching her that her green Hatch at 6:40 = okay to wake/come out.

We’d love for her to start having sleepovers at her grandparents’ again. Previously she slept in a Pack ’n Play with a SlumberPod, but I don’t really want to go back to the PNP now that she’s in a bed. I’m considering an inflatable toddler mattress that fits inside the SlumberPod, but I’m not sure how she’ll like it.

Her older sister usually sleeps in bed with a grandparent, so I’m also wondering if we should just let our 3.5yo bedshare with the other grandparent for sleepovers, or if that could interfere with the independent sleep we’ve worked on.

For those with good independent sleepers: what do you do at grandparents’ houses? Do you try to mimic home, use a travel bed, or allow bedsharing because it’s a special sleepover?

I just started pick up put down method tonight as baby is showing repeatedly that she does not want to fall asleep at the boob any more and I don’t want to get back in to rocking her to sleep. She did amazingly well, no tears or big crying and she fell asleep after an hour and twenty. She then woke up 10 mins later and was upset, it was an hour after bed time by this point so she was falling asleep instantly in my arms and really crying so I pulled the plug. Where do we go from here, just try again tomorrow?

I’m really struggling to figure out my little guy’s sleep schedule right now and would love some advice from other parents who have been through this stage!
He is 20 weeks old (5 months on the 2nd) and his sleep is SO inconsistent, both during the day and at night. He hardly ever gives obvious sleepy cues, but he pretty much always looks tired, so I’m constantly second-guessing whether I’m putting him down too early or too late. 😩
We’re also dealing with reflux and laryngomalacia, which has made feeding and sleep a little more complicated. I often need to feed him to sleep or feed him while he’s sleeping because that’s sometimes the only way I can get enough milk into him. So I’m not really in a position to simply separate feeding and sleep right now.
The good news is that he does go down for naps in his crib with maybe 10 minutes of fussing, so I know he is capable of settling there. ❤️
He was previously sleeping through the night, and he will still occasionally do it, but more often than not he is now waking once or twice overnight. He also sometimes wakes as early as 5:00 a.m., although lately it’s more commonly around 6:00–6:30 a.m. Our ideal wake-up time would be around 6:30–7:00 a.m.
We aim for a 7:00 p.m. bedtime, but it seems like we’re having to move bedtime earlier to accommodate 3 naps a day.
Right now, we’re roughly following wake windows of:
1.75 / 2 / 2 / 2.5
But I’m honestly not sure if this is appropriate for his age, especially because his naps and nighttime sleep are so inconsistent.
For those with babies around 5 months, what did your schedules look like? Did you follow wake windows, sleepy cues, or a combination? How did you handle 3 naps while still aiming for a 6:30–7:00 a.m. wake-up and 7:00 p.m. bedtime?
And especially if you had a baby with reflux/laryngomalacia or feeding issues, I’d really love to hear what worked for you. ❤️
Any advice, sample schedules, or even just reassurance that this is a normal stage would be SO appreciated! 🥹

I really want to wean my one year old. I have chronic pain and the only thing that works is CBD. I can’t use that while breastfeeding. My one year old is very reliant on feeding to sleep and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve tried everything. My husband will try to put her down and she just screams. I’ve tried lowing the time but she just re wakes up and hysterically cry’s. I’ve tried sitting next to her and rubbing her back, giving her cuddles and singing but she cry’s. Every-time she just hysterically cry’s. I try to see if she’ll go to sleep and she won’t l. One time it was an hour and she still wouldn’t stop so I just gave up and breastfed her. What should I do?

Baby was sleep trained for night sleep at 5 months and she's doing great! Sometimes wakes for 1 feed after about 8 hours but recently has been sleeping through the night for about 10.5/11 hours!

About 2 weeks after night sleep, we nap trained and she's able to fall asleep independently. The problem is the duration. There are some days she can do 1.5 hours or so but last few days it's been constant 30-40 minute naps. Currently on a 3 nap schedule with 8pm bedtime and 7am wake up and ~10.5 hours awake. 2.5/2.5/2.5/3.

She seems to be able to do 3+ hour WWs comfortably and we tried to switch to 2 naps but with the 30 minute wake ups, that doesn't work for her schedule.

Is this just age-related or a schedule issue?

Hello all,

I feel like I was lucky to have a baby that falls asleep relatively on their own and just struggled through the rest of the nights...

5 month old adjusted (born 33 weeks).

Basically we put him down to sleep between 8-830 after bath, pj's, bottle, book, sleep sack and a song in the crib (black out curtains/ white noise, all that). For the most part I can get him to sleep by sometimes a hand on the chest and some shushing but occasionally I have to rock. But he is either awake in the crib or drowsy then puts himself to sleep (rocks his head as a self soothe). I have NOT been successful in this during middle of the night or early morning wakings. We do a dream feed around 12ish (unless he is up earlier, if so we give him a bottle then). He tends to wake up around 330 or 430. Until now, I would take him to bed with me until he has his bottle at 6 am, at which I pump and then he will sleep until 8-830 (he won't fall asleep until 630-7).

Please understand that I know this isn't sustainable and I am wanting to fix this.

The early morning wakes he will not be settled himself, even if I rock him to sleep he wakes up when transferred.

Daytime schedule (just now trying to get on a schedule, please do not judge...): 1.75/2/2/2.5.

He also has HORRIBLE naps. We attempt a crib nap with the first nap of the day and it lasts 25-35 minutes at most. Even when the wake window is stretched to 2 hours. Because of this I contact nap with him for the other two naps, usually 1.5 hour each (occasionally one will be an hour, adding up to approximately 3-3.5 hours of day sleep).

My question is- should I just feed to sleep at the 330-430 wakings? Should I fix my schedule to create more sleep pressure? My only worry is that because he's up for parts of the night I'm worried he isn't getting his recommended 10-10.5 hour night sleep.

I'm more concerned with night sleep as I know I have to get this down before tackling naps.

Wanting to attempt FIO from PLS book, but I want to make sure I'm going about it with the right schedule (and night feedings)

Thank you all in advance- I'm just a worried FTM that wants the best sleep for my child.

Baby is 4.5 months, EBF. A month ago, she could go from 8p-2/3a between feeds. Then I suspect the sleep regression hit and she wakes up every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. I started feeding her at the 11 PM (because she would wake up crying) and it’s been going on now for over two weeks. We are currently feeding at 8p, 11p, 2/3a, 5-7a. She got her four month vaccines last week and that night she went from 8p till 3 AM so I know she can do it. We have tried to send in my husband to soothe her at 11p, but it’s a crying mess for 45 minutes. She is pretty good about putting herself to sleep. We lay her down awake and she plays with her hands for a little bit, then finds her thumb and falls asleep. Last night my husband bottle fed her so I could get some sleep. She took 3.75 ounces at 11 then 4 ounces at three. Could it be she is just hungry? Feels like a long growth spurt?
We don’t feed to sleep (except overnight). At bedtime, I feed her in a different room then put her sleep sack on and lay her in the crib drowsy but awake.

She sleeps an average of 13.5 hours in 24 hours. She does only 30 minute naps about 4-5x/ day.

Tips on backing off the 11 PM feed? Should I keep pushing through until solids? I need sleep! We are open to sleep training we just don’t know how to do it if she seems hungry each time she wakes up.

So me and my wife have a son, he absolutely refuses to sleep on his own. I know we fucked up pretty bad by not implementing anything while he was younger but I’m looking for advice or guidance on what we should do.

For his naps we always give him a bottle and rock him to sleep, lately we’ve been just trying to lay him down in his bed in hopes he falls asleep with us just laying there. It 100% doesn’t work and he’s usually up, messing around, babbling, things like that. We’ve tried doing a modified Ferber method (soft cry it out) where he works himself up so much that he just about stops breathing and he’s up for hours after that.
Even with us rocking him to sleep, we’ll get him down for an hour and that’s it. He’s up after an hour and we’re lucky if we can get him back down by rocking him again.

Nighttime is the same routine and struggle, we usually cave and my wife will go sleep in bed with him so we can at least get a few hours of actual sleep. I know im probably leaving a lot of important details out so if you have any questions please ask, I’m just looking for someone with some insight into what worked for them and possibly someone who has dealt with something similar. Thank you to all who read this and attempt to help.

A while ago I asked for advice on how to get our 5 year old to fall asleep without us having to lie with her till her sleeps. And I got lots of good advice and anecdotes.

So we have started to implement it and it’s going terribly. We will read to her and cuddle her for a bit longer. Then we leave and will do check ins at increasing intervals.

But she is the strongest willed child I know. She will just wait for us, scream the whole time, or continually come out of her room. If she comes out before a check in, I just walk her right back without saying anything. Last night she was up till midnight (her normal bedtime is 8pm) and she had bloodshot eyes and was obviously so exhausted but just refused to sleep. Finally she went to sleep when my partner sat on her bed with her patting her back and singing to her. Tonight she didn’t get to sleep until 11pm and that was cause she waited till we wanted to go to bed (and kept coming out of her room to check if we were going to sleep yet). And then she came into our bed. And at that point we were both so exhausted and at a loss of what to do that we just let it happen.

I need advice. This has been going on for a week and it’s just getting worse and worse everyday. It feels like torture and everyone in the house is so exhausted.

We just completed Ferber night 5. We have seen immense progress and could not be more thrilled.

That being said, I’m curious if your Ferber sleep trained baby ever eventually never cried at all throughout the night? It is okay if the answer is ‘no’ or ‘every baby is different’.

He currently cries for about 5min at the start of the night, then does 1 long stretch of 6-8hrs, then cries for 5-15min, does another 2hr stretch, cries for 5-15min, then does another hour or so. Is this just how he sleeps or can we get hopeful that eventually those middle of the night cries will disappear??

One thing to keep in mind is he can roll onto his tummy but not back yet. He LOVES sleeping on his belly but LOATHES tummy time lol. So he will roll to his belly and get comfy to sleep, but when he’s awake he is completely miserable on his belly. I wonder if that’s part of the crying…like he wakes and is miserable on his belly?

I know it’s only night 5 so we will find out 🙃

For context:
-he was preciously waking every 45-60min due to pacifier loss
-we went cold turkey on snoo, swaddle, pacifier, and sleeping in his own room/crib (he is a f-ing champ)
-he is on a 4 nap schedule with wake windows being: 1.5/1.75/1.75/2/2 (20 weeks old)

She naps one nap that’s like almost 3 hours daily around 10. Wakes up around 7 am. When we put her down we read give her a bottle and she falls asleep either on the bottle or very shortly after while we rock her. Goes down at 7:30pm. Ferber method was making her insane so I switched to sleep wave.
It’s been over an hour now. This didn’t happen with my older daughter. I don’t know what to do. Just sitting on the staircase outside her room staring at the baby monitor and losing my mind.
What do I do? How long is too long.

is $3k for 2 months of sleep consulting for 2 kids a rip off?! Ages 5mo and 3yo. I have no experience in this. I saw her reels on instagram and reached out. I don’t want to disclose too much info because of that.